God Heard: God Answered
OLD Devai, with her vivid conversation about the one old devil and four
younger, does not suggest a conciliatory attitude towards the people of
her land. And it may be possible so to misinterpret the spirit of this
book as to see in it only something unappreciative and therefore unkind.
So it shall now be written down in sincerity and earnestness that
nothing of the sort is intended. The thing we fight is not India or
Indian, in essence or development. It is something alien to the old life
of the people. It is not allowed in the Vedas (ancient sacred books). It
is like a parasite which has settled upon the bough of some noble
forest-tree--on it, but not of it. The parasite has gripped the bough
with strong and interlacing roots; but it is not the bough.
We think of the real India as we see it in the thinker--the seeker after
the unknown God, with his wistful eyes. "The Lord beholding him loved
him," and we cannot help loving as we look. And there is the Indian
woman hidden away from the noise of crowds, patient in her motherhood,
loyal to the light she has. We see the spirit of the old land there;
and it wins us and holds us, and makes it a joy to be here to live for
India.
The true India is sensitive and very gentle. There is a wisdom in its
ways, none the less wise because it is not the wisdom of the West. This
spirit which traffics in children is callous and fierce as a ravening
beast; and its wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly,
sensual, devilish. . . . And this spirit, alien to the land, has settled
upon it, and made itself at home in it, and so become a part of it that
nothing but the touch of God will ever get it out. We want that touch of
God: "Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke." That is why we write.
For we write for those who believe in prayer--not in the emasculated
modern sense, but in the old Hebrew sense, deep as the other is shallow.
We believe there is some connection between knowing and caring and
praying, and what happens afterwards. Otherwise we should leave the
darkness to cover the things that belong to the dark. We should be for
ever dumb about them, if it were not that we know an evil covered up is
not an evil conquered. So we do the thing from which we shrink with
strong recoil; we stand on the edge of the pit, and look down and tell
what we have seen, urged by the longing within us that the Christians of
England should pray.
"Only pray?" does someone ask? Prayer of the sort we mean never stops
with praying. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it," is the prayer's
solemn afterword; but the prayer we ask is no trifle. Lines from an
American poet upon what it costs to make true poetry, come with
suggestion here:--
Deem not the framing of a deathless lay
The pastime of a drowsy summer day.
But gather all thy powers, and wreck them on the verse
That thou dost weave. . . .
The secret wouldst thou know
To touch the heart or fire the blood at will?
Let thine eyes overflow,
Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill.
"Arise, cry out in the night; in the beginning of the night watches pour
out thine heart like water before the Lord; lift up thine hands towards
Him for the life of thy young children!"
The story of the children is the story of answered prayer. If any of us
were tempted to doubt whether, after all, prayer is a genuine
transaction, and answers to prayer no figment of the imagination--but
something as real as the tangible things about us--we have only to look
at some of our children. It would require more faith to believe that
what we call the Answer came by chance or by the action of some
unintelligible combination of controlling influences, than to accept the
statement in its simplicity--God heard: God answered.
In October, 1908, we were told of two children whose mother had recently
died. They were with their father in a town some distance from Dohnavur;
but the source from which our information came was so unreliable that we
hardly knew whether to believe it, and we prayed rather a tentative
prayer: "If the children exist, save them." For three months we heard
nothing; then a rumour drifted across to us that the elder of the two
had died in a Temple house. The younger, six months old, was still with
her father. On Christmas Eve our informant arrived in the compound with
his usual unexpectedness. The father was near, but would not come nearer
because the following day being Friday (a day of ill-omen), he did not
wish to discuss matters concerning the child; he would come on Saturday.
On Saturday he came, carrying a dear little babe with brilliant eyes.
She almost sprang from him into our arms, and we saw she was mad with
thirst. She was fed and put to sleep, and hardly daring yet to rejoice
(for the matter was not settled with the father), we took him aside and
discussed the case with him. There were difficulties. A Temple woman had
offered a large sum for the child, and had also promised to bequeath
her property to her. He had heard, however, that we had little children
who had all but been given to Temples, and he had come to reconnoitre
rather than to decide.
The position was explained to him. But the Temple meant to him
everything that was worshipful. How could anything that was wrong be
sanctioned by the gods? The child's mother had been a devout Hindu; and
as we went deeper and deeper into things with him, it was evident he
became more and more reluctant to leave the little one with us. "Her
mother would have felt it shame and eternal dishonour." We were in the
little prayer-room, a flowery little summer-house in the garden, when
this talk took place. On either side are the nurseries, and playing on
the wide verandahs were happy, healthy babes; their merry shouts filled
the spaces in the conversation. Sometimes a little toddling thing would
find her way across to the prayer-room, and break in upon the talk with
affectionate caresses. To our eyes everything looked so happy, so
incomparably better than anything the Temple house could offer, that it
was difficult to adjust one's mental vision so as to understand that of
the Hindu beside us, to whose thought all the happiness was as nothing,
because these babes would be brought up without caste. In the Temple
house caste is kept most carefully. If a Temple woman breaks the rules
of her community she is out-casted, excommunicated. "You do not keep
caste! you do not keep caste!" the father repeated over and over again
in utter dismay. It was nothing to him that the babes were well and
strong, and as happy as the day was long; nothing to him that
cleanliness reigned, so far as constant supervision could ensure it,
through every corner of the compound. We did not profess to keep caste;
we welcomed every little child in danger of being given to Temples,
irrespective altogether of her caste. All castes were welcome to us, for
all were dear to our Lord. This was beyond him; and he declared he would
never have brought his child to us, had he understood it before. "Let
her die rather! There is no disgrace in death." As he talked and
expounded his views, he argued himself further and further away from us
in spirit, until he became disgusted with himself for ever having
considered giving the baby to us. All this time the baby lay asleep; and
as we looked at the little face and noted the "mother-want," the
appealing expression of pitiful weariness even in sleep, it was all we
could do to turn away and face the almost inevitable result of the
conversation. Once the father, a splendid looking man, tall and
dignified, rose and stood erect in sudden indignation. "Where is the
babe? I will take her away and do as I will with her. She is my child!"
We persuaded him to wait awhile as she was asleep, and we went away to
pray. Together we waited upon God, whose touch turns hard rocks into
standing water, and flint-stone into a springing well, beseeching Him to
deal with that father's heart, and make it melt and yield. And as we
waited it seemed as if an answer of peace were distinctly given to us,
and we rose from our knees at rest. But just at that moment the father
went to where his baby slept in her cradle, and he took her up and
walked away in a white heat of wrath.
The little one was in an exhausted condition, for she had not had
suitable food for at least three days. It was the time of our
land-winds, which are raw and cold to South Indian people; and it seemed
that the answer of peace must mean peace after death of cold and
starvation. It would soon be over, we knew; twenty-four hours, more or
less, and those great wistful eyes would close, and the last cry would
be cried. But even twenty-four hours seemed long to think of a child in
distress, and her being so little did not make it easier to think of her
dying like that. So on Sunday morning I shut myself up in my room asking
for quick relief for her, or--but this seemed almost asking too
much--that she might be given back to us. And as I prayed, a knock came
at the door, and a voice called joyously, "Oh, Amma! Amma! Come! The
father stands outside the church; he has brought the baby back!"
But the child was almost in collapse. Without a word he dropped the
cold, limp little body into our arms, and prostrated himself till his
forehead touched the dust. We had not time to think of him, we hardly
noted his extraordinary submission, for all our thought was for the
babe. There was no pulse to be felt, only those far too brilliant eyes
looked alive. We worked with restoratives for hours, and at last the
little limbs warmed and the pulse came back. But it was a bounding,
unnatural pulse, and the restlessness which supervened confirmed the
tale of the brilliant eyes--the little babe had been drugged.
From that day on till our Prayer-day, January 6th, it was one long,
unremitting fight with death. We wrote to our medical comrade in Neyoor,
and described the symptoms, which were all bad. He could give us little
hope. Gradually the brilliance passed from the eyes, and they became
what the Tamils call "dead." The film formed after which none of us had
ever seen recovery. Then we gathered round the little cot in the room we
call Tranquillity, and we gave the babe her Christian name Vimala, the
Spotless One; for we thought that very soon she would be without spot
and blameless, another little innocent in that happy band of innocents
who see His Face.
On the evening of the 5th, friends of our own Mission who were with us
seemed to lay hold for the life of the child with such fresh earnestness
and faith, that we ourselves were strengthened. Next morning we believed
we saw a change in the little deathlike face, and that evening we were
sure the child's life was coming back to her.
It was not till then we thought of the father, who, after signing a
paper made out for him by our pastor, who is always ready to help us,
had returned to his own town. When we heard all that had occurred we saw
how our God had worked for us. It was not fear of his baby's death that
had moved the man to return to us. "What is the death of a babe? Let her
die across my shoulders!" He was not afraid of the law. After all
persuasions had failed, we had tried threats: the thing he purposed to
do was illegal. The Collector (chief magistrate) would do justice. "What
care I for your Collector? How can he find me if I choose to lose
myself? How can you prove anything against me?" And in that he spoke the
truth. There are ways by which the intention of the law concerning
little children can be most easily and successfully circumvented. Our
pleadings had not touched him. "Is she not my child? Was her mother not
my wife? Who has the right to come between this child of mine and me her
father?" And so saying he had departed without the slightest intention
of coming back again. But a Power with which he did not reckon had him
in sight; and a Hand was laid upon him, and it bent him like a reed. We
hope some ray of a purer light than he had ever experienced found its
way into his darkened soul, and revealed to him the sin of his
intention. But we only know that he left his child and went back to his
own town. God had heard: God had answered.